Women who watched aggressive TV
heroines as
children more prone to aggression and criminal behavior, says
U-M
study

By Deborah Gilbert
News and Information
Services

Television shows like "The Bionic Woman" and "Charlie's
Angels"
may have faded into rerun history, but the heroines'
aggressive
behavior lingers in the psyches of many of the young women
who
watched such shows avidly 15 or 20 years ago.

A U-M study
reports that women in their early 20s, who had
frequently watched violent
television shows as children and
identified with aggressive heroines, are
more physically aggressive,
have more aggressive personalities and are
more prone to criminal
acts than women who did not watch much TV violence
as children.

The findings, which are based on an initial study of
384 girls in
1977 and a follow-up study of 211 of the same sample in
1992,
contrast with research in the 1960s.

"A 1963 study found
that boys who watched violent television
programs regularly were more
aggressive than boys who did not. Girls
in that study, however, were not
much affected," says L. Rowell
Huesmann, professor of psychology and
research scientist in the
Aggression Research Group at the Institute for
Social Research.

"The 1977 study, however, found a notable trend.
Now girls who
watched televised violence were becoming more aggressive,
too." What
accounted for the change?

Huesmann and his research
colleague, graduate student Jessica F.
Moise, hypothesize that the
increasing aggressiveness of little girls
in the 1970s was related to
changing mores and a new kind of TVheroine.

"Increasingly, society
accepted aggression in women, and the new
acceptance showed up in
television scripts. Television heroines began
to use guns and muscle to
attain their ends, just like the male
heroes," Huesmann explains. "Now
little girls had aggressive
characters to identify with,
too."

Many of those little girls continued to identify with
such
heroines after they reached adulthood, and it affected
their
behavior, Huesmann notes.

"After comparing the 1977 and 1992
data, we found that watching
violence on television has an additive effect
over time. Girls who
watched considerable violence on television were more
aggressive and
fantasized about aggression more often as children. They
also were
much more likely to be perceived as aggressive by their
peers."

Those who continued to watch a great deal of televised
violence as
adults were the most aggressive of all. "Those women had
more
aggressive personalities, reported they engaged more frequently
in
both mild and severe physical aggression, and committed more
criminal
acts."

How does watching violence on television lead to
aggressive
behavior?

"Children who watch violence on television
fantasize about it and
mentally rehearse specific aggressive acts. The
rehearsals increase
the likelihood they will use them in real situations
where conflict
is present. The cognitive effects of these rehearsals
linger into
adulthood and affect adult behavior," Huesmann
explains.

The study will appear in the Annals of the New York
Academy of
Sciences in late spring.